BWH Welcomes Newest Residents on Match Day

Graduating HMS student Neo Tapela aspires to establish a medical school in her native Bostwana, a small country with no means of educating its own doctors. Since there is no medical school, Tapela was sponsored by her country to study at Harvard.

She is one of the 72 graduating medical students to match with BWH's prestigious Internal Medicine Residency Program this month. BWH's newest class of residents has interests spanning from global health care to nanotechnology and diverse backgrounds that include volunteering for Partners In Health and working as a pastry chef.

"This has been a wonderful match season," said Joel Katz, MD, director of the Internal Medicine Residency program, in welcoming the students to BWH at a reception in Carrie Hall. "We wanted to welcome in the first year of (Department of Medicine Chairman) Joe Loscalzo in style, and we really hit a home run."

Marshall Wolf, MD, Bruce Levy, MD, and other physicians and residents warmly welcomed the excited students at the reception.

"I'm absolutely elated," Tapela said. "This is my first choice. I love the feeling of this institution."

Kerunne Ketlogetswe, another native of Botswana who plans to return there eventually to improve health care, said she was "thrilled" to be starting at BWH. "You're no longer a student, but a doctor making a difference," she said.

Another newly matched student interested in global health is Aaron Mann, a former volunteer for Partners In Health, the organization founded by BWH Division of Social Medicine and Health Inequalities' Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, and Jim Yong Kim, MD, PhD. Mann spent the summer after his first year of medical school in Haiti caring for patients. His wife, Julie, works as a midwife for Partners In Health.

Both Mann and his classmate David Miyamoto commented on the inspiring medical staff at BWH. "I'm most drawn to the Brigham because of its people," said Miyamoto, who will join Radiation/Oncology after his preliminary year training in Internal Medicine.

Patty Tung's route to medicine was less direct than most. Before attending Harvard Medical School, Tung worked as a pastry chef at Finale, a favorite dessert eatery in the South End. Before that, she earned a master's degree in health policy and worked in the field. "I thought I could get rid of the health care bug that way," she said. "In the end though, I really love medicine and look forward to working with so many of my former professors here at Brigham."